


I laid my weapons down

by lagardère (laurore)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Jon having to deal with his uselessness during the Long Night, post-8x03, spoiler: he doesn't cope particularly well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 20:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18709801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/pseuds/lagard%C3%A8re
Summary: “It is far easier, isn’t it, to be at war."





	I laid my weapons down

**Author's Note:**

> I came out of 8x03 wanting to write a story about Jon, so here it is. My main take-away from this is that writing canon-compliant fic this season feels sort of like trying to walk on a tight-rope above a shark tank, and the rope is on fire. 
> 
> Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2dBn-aIYIo%E2%80%9D>this%20song</a>.%0AThis%20fic%20is%20basically%20an%20extended%20version%20of%20<a%20href=).
> 
> This [tumblr post](https://northernshe-wolf.tumblr.com/post/184580300277/jon-snow-cant-use-we-dont-have-time-for-this) says it all.

**i.**

 

The fires of the night are still dying down as they begin to build the pyres. Jon throws himself into the effort as if it would keep the memories of the battle at bay. He cuts down trees with the remaining soldiers, he erects the woodpiles and helps carry the bodies of the dead. 

There will be pyres in the fields outside of the castle, and pyres in the main courtyard. They have lain Lyanna and Jorah Mormont side by side, but for the most part little difference is made between the fallen, those who came to Winterfell as wights to fight for the Night’s King and those who started out the night on the side of the living and ended it on the side of the dead. Dothraki and Unsullied, Northerners and Ironborn, Free Folk and kneelers, trained soldiers and farmers, noblemen and small folk, all lie upon the same wooden stacks. At first, order was given to remove the armours that the dead still wore, and to pry the dragonglass from their hands, but after a while the command dies out and neither Jon nor Daenerys tries to revive it. 

Better a few breastplates and shields end up blackened and twisted upon scorched ground than the survivors of the battle be made to feel like scavengers, stripping the bodies of their allies and families and friends.

The dead dragon they pull out from the ruins of the courtyard where Jon had encountered it as the battle came to its abrupt end. It takes eighteen men to carry the beast outside of Winterfell, and there they dig a pit where it will be buried as Daenerys watches on in her grey coat, her red eyes dry, looking as if she had stepped out of the white snow at her back - as if the snow might yet claim her once more.

Everyone that Jon comes across looks haggard and spent. It is a relief not to be able to see his own face.

 

 

 

**ii.**

 

He has become a creature of half-impulses. 

Seeing Daenerys walk towards him across the rubble of the bloodied yard, he gives her a frankly frightful approximation of a smile, and then he disappears behind one of the pyres, walking so fast that he twists his ankle upon a broken spear. They have spoken little since the battle ended, and Jon offered to carry Jorah Mormont’s body back to the castle with Greyworm’s help. Daenerys is mourning the loss of her army, but it is visible as well that she is already looking ahead, and Jon does not have it in him to do the same, not just yet.

He seeks out Sansa because Arya told him to. _"I think she needs someone to comfort her, and I don’t think me or Bran or Brienne’s equipped for that."_

 _“And you think I am?”_ Jon had snapped back, before closing his mouth in surprise at how petulant he sounded. 

He walks all the way to the lord’s chambers, going so far as to step through the door, relieved of having to knock because Sansa has left it partly open, as if in invitation. _An invitation to whom?_ It can’t possibly be him. 

Her cloak lies bundled on the floor of her solar as if she’d thrown it down the moment she’d stepped in, and next to it, like some battered shell, is Theon’s armour, with the embossed kraken across the front, and the crack in the side where the Night King ran him through. Jon had pulled out the broken spear himself. Sansa had then replaced him at Theon’s side, gloved hands working fast over the straps of the dead man’s armour, her face paler than the surrounding snow.

When Jon steps inside her chamber Sansa startles, and for the space of a few breaths they merely stare at each other, Sansa with her tear-streaked face and Jon wishing he had given her more of a forewarning. Then she could have told him to stay away, when it is plain to see she has no use for his company, for his clumsy affection or his pitiful words of comfort. 

He beats a hasty retreat, with a mumbled apology that causes him to flatten both hands against his face once he is back in the dark corridor, his eyes tightly shut against the very thought of his ineffectual behaviour.

_Snow, you idiot._

 

 

 

**iii.**

 

When the time comes to light the pyres, he almost expects himself to fling down the torch and walk away. Not with the determination that he’d displayed so many winter months ago, after he’d executed the traitors at Castle Black. Then he’d walked off convinced that he needn’t spent another day in the north if he didn’t want to. 

No, if he were to run away now, it would be a coward’s retreat, eyes down-turned to avoid the stares of the people who once proclaimed him a king - a Stark - a brother. The commander of armies, the slayer of white walkers, the shield that guarded the realms of men. 

What is left of it all, after this battle has swept over him like the gale sends the leaf in a whirl, after his younger sister defeated the foe that has been ghosting his steps for years (icy fingers pressed against his temples, holding his eyes open at all times so he would never lose sight of his goal -)

The Night King is finally gone and Jon stares into the fire of the pyres and sees nothing, and for the first time since that fateful night at Castle Black, life trickling out of him as blood spread upon the snow, the truth coalesces inside him as a fully-formed thought.

_I might as well be dead._

 

 

 

**iv.**

 

When the dead dragon had collapsed, when Jon had stumbled through the ruins and into the Godswood, and he had seen Arya and Bran - his sister standing, the curved blade of the dagger reflecting the pale light of dawn; his brother ever quiet and watchful, as if the frantic rush of time had agreed to slow its pace in Bran’s vicinity - Jon’s first feeling had not been one of relief, but of shame.

 

 

 

**v.**

 

As the flames climb ever higher and the fire takes hold of the last of the pyres, Jon steps away. 

_Later_ , he says to Daenerys’ offer of a meeting of their council. Later to Davos’ entreaties of a feast to celebrate the end of the war. _Later_ to whatever it was that Sam wanted when he caught a hold of his sleeve.

 _Later_ to Bran’s wordless stare. 

Some of the people gathered around the fires will remain until the last of the bodies have been burnt. It is easy to tell those apart from the rest. Their red-rimmed eyes, their vacant stares, their jaws clenched upon a horror and grief that they cannot voice in words or screams or sobs. Sansa stands first among those, a pale-faced statue, dignified and impossibly distant. Again Jon wonders what Arya had meant, sending him to talk to this sister whom he fears he’ll never understand, who directed the clearing of the rubble and the gathering of the bodies of the dead with a clear voice and a competent hand, although mere moments before she had been openly weeping in her chambers.

He would try to talk to her, would at least risk a brief brush of his hand against her elbow as he leaves, but Tyrion beats him to it, making a beeline for Sansa through the crowd and coming to stand right beside her as if it mattered little that he had missed the lighting of the pyres.

Jon is hardly the only one to leave. Slowly the survivors of the battle have begun to drift away from the yard. The smell of charred meat is too strong, the smoke stings the eyes and clogs the throat, and after the long night, most of them yearn for a deep sleep. As he wanders through the castle, Jon comes across soldiers passed out on the floors, sleeping right upon the bare stone. Northern families retreat five to a room and bar the doors, caring little about who the room might belong or have belonged to. Every hearth has been requisitioned by huddles of silent folk. When Jon finally comes to the door of his own chambers, he finds a young couple lying on his bed, caught in a frozen embrace. The both of them are so still that he recoils on instinct, thinking they must be dead. As he comes closer however, he notices the imperceptible rise and fall of the girl’s chest, the slight shaking of her hand where it clutches the boy’s shirt.

Once again he chooses to retreat, though this flight has none of the blustering folly of the others, and when he steps out of the room and sees Ghost in the corridor, he surprises himself with a smile.

“Where have you been?” he asks, kneeling on the cold stones, his hand outstretched to scratch the direwolf’s ears.

Ghost comes easily enough, though Jon could swear that there’s a hint of reproach in his red eyes.

“Aye, I should have fought alongside you. For all the good it did me to try and do things differently…”

Ghost bumps his head against Jon’s fingers, puts a sooty paw upon Jon’s knee. 

“Mayhap I was running away from you too. The gods know I’ve been doing nothing but of late.”

He raises his head to find a shaggy figure watching him from the landing of the stairs. Tormund did not bother to wash himself after the battle; his face is still splattered with blood and mud.

“Been looking all over for you.” He comes to tower over Jon, bushy red eyebrows thoroughly furrowed. “You’ve got us worried and worrying’s not the kind of thing I like to do after a victory.”

“There’s nothing to worry about.” Jon thinks his smile has improved since he came upon Daenerys in the courtyard this morning. “You should be celebrating.”

“Should I get the dragon queen for you?” Tormund asks gruffly. This offer coupled with his uncharacteristic restraint are enough to shatter whatever illusions Jon might have had. He gives up on trying to smile, his eyes shifting back to Ghost’s damp fur and to the slow movement of his hand upon the direwolf’s neck.

“No,” he says. “Better if you don’t.”

“Won’t do you any good to mourn by yourself. Doesn’t matter who the fuck it is that you’re mourning, you’ve got to do it with people around you, little crow. Come have a drink with us. It’s what your sad friend would have wanted.”

It takes Jon an inordinate amount of time to understand who Tormund is talking about, and when he does, he has to swallow down a new surge of guilt before he can answer.

For a moment, he had forgotten about Edd. Unless it is that it had been easier to forget. It will not do, in any case, to tell Tormund that he hasn’t so much been mourning Edd as the end of the battle.

“I’ll come join you later,” he says. _Later_. It’s the same tone that he’s been using since the sun came up. Vague, indefinite, a blatant lie. But then again, he was never the best of liars.

“Save you some of that piss you call ale,” Tormund says, and sets his large hand atop Jon’s head, as if in a strange blessing. “You did good out there. Don’t you start thinking you failed us somehow.”

“The fact that you feel the need to say that makes me think that you’re lying,” Jon says. “But it doesn’t matter. There’ll be another war, won’t there? Daenerys is already preparing for it. I’ll have to prove myself in that one, I suppose.”

“You don’t have to prove yourself, Snow. You’ve already done more in your two lives than most kneelers do by the time their hair turns white. Now it might be that you’ve got a choice to make. To go down south with your queen or to decide you’ve had enough and stay here. But no one’s going to ask you to decide today, not even her.”

“That was surprisingly profound,” Jon remarks. Tormund offers him a hand and he lets himself be pulled to his feet, wincing as his tired limbs protest the motion.

“Stop hiding,” Tormund tells him sternly. “Come have a drink with me.”

“Don’t you have anywhere better to be?”

But Tormund is persistent, and far bigger than him, and in the end Jon finds himself hauled down a flight of stairs and along a walkway and finally inside a guards’ room, where they are greeted by a number of familiar faces. Arya fills a mug for him and Gendry fetches him a chair while Tormund approaches Brienne. Podrick is snoring softly on Sandor Clegane’s shoulder, and Sam and Gilly are gathered by the fire with Little Sam and an added child, a little girl with the tell-tale grey scars on her face who jumps to her feet the moment Ghost appears. Moments later Ghost is lying close to the fire with the girl using him as a pillow.

Jon gulps down a mug of ale and then another, listening to the conversations around him. Talk of Arya’s exploits, which spurs them all to raise their mugs in honour of “Arya Stark, Slayer of Monsters”. Talk of Melisandre, who had brought her fire to the battle and then wandered off no one knows where. Talk of Daenerys rounding up her remaining troops. Davos comes in at one point, bringing word of the feast that is being prepared in the kitchens and of the preparations led by Sansa in the great hall. Arya gives Jon a pointed look when mention is made of Sansa and Tyrion Lannister’s newfound truce, of how inseparable they have been since they both stepped out of the crypts.

“They stayed together last night, and some of the women said they made an odd pair, but I don’t think that’s true,” Gilly says. “He’s a brave man, isn’t he? You don’t have to be tall to be brave.”

“Hear hear!” says Gendry, which prompts another round of loud compliments regarding Arya’s valour and battle prowess. 

Davos stays long enough to whisper a few words of warning in Jon’s ear. The army of tens of thousands has shrunk to a tenth of its size and part of their stores burned down during the night. On that subject, Davos agrees with Daenerys that it might be better to blame the dead dragon rather than the living ones. His messages delivered, he picks up the sleeping child and bears her away, with Ghost padding silently behind them. 

Jon catches himself dozing off, and jolts awake as the empty mug is about to fall from his hand. Most of the earlier group is gone. He has a faint recollection of his sister pulling Gendry by the hand, of the door opening onto the walkway and a curtain of snow. He chooses to believe it was a dream, rather than something that requires his immediate attention. Podrick is still dead to the world, with Clegane now slumped on the chair beside him, twitching nervously in his sleep. Sam is watching other Gilly and Little Sam, who have replaced the girl on the warm stones in front of the fire.

“I should go,” Jon says. He sets the mug down at his feet.

“Where?” Sam asks. “Unless you mean you’re going to get some sleep, I think it’s alright if you stay. You need to be recovered enough for the feast. I’m sure they’ll be expecting you to talk - the northerners, and everyone else.”

“I’ll have to talk to Daenerys before that,” Jon says. “Before the feast.”

“That would be wise,” Sam says. “I mean… I don’t mean to say that I know better. I don’t know better, about wars and ruling kingdoms, I mean. But I think you should talk to her.”

Jon is halfway to the door when he thinks to stop. He turns back and forces himself to look into Sam’s round, guileless eyes, which have never expressed anything but kindness towards him. Even now, Sam’s smile is a show of quiet support. It gives Jon a sudden urge to punch something. Possibly his own face.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t… Last night, when I saw you across the battlefield. I should have gone to you.”

“No, you had to find the Night’s King. I understand.”

“But I didn’t. I’ve been behaving as if…” _I’ve been behaving as if I was the hero of this story. And I wasn’t. What right do I have, to make grand decisions that will affect the fate of mankind?_

_Why did the Red Woman bring me back?_

Melisandre has vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared, however, and Jon has an inkling of how Sam would answer this question if it were put to him. _You’re Aegon Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne._

He remembers Tormund, telling him he had a choice. To go south or remain north. _To rain further destruction, or to rebuild the ruins_ , he thinks dispiritedly.

Sam is still giving him an encouraging look, as if there was nothing strange about the fact that Jon had drifted off mid sentence with a pained look upon his face.

“I’ve been behaving as if I knew what I was doing,” Jon says. “And I used to. We had to win this war. Now that it’s over, I don’t… I’m no longer sure of anything.”

“Well, you can be sure of one thing,” Sam says.

Jon is already frowning, expecting some further talk of secret weddings and secret heirs to the throne, but Sam’s face breaks into a wide grin as he finishes, raising his mug, “As bad as it gets, the ale won’t ever be as bad as it was at Castle Black. That’s what Edd would say, isn’t it?”

Jon laughs despite himself.

“No. Edd would say it can always get worse. But if he really believed that, he wouldn’t have stuck with us all the way to the end. He was more hopeful than he looked.”

“An inspiration to all of us,” Sam says, and trying to knock back his mug, he takes too large a mouthful and begins to cough up his ale.

 

 

 

**vi.**

 

The castle is slowly stirring as Jon walks away from the guards’ room. Northerners walk past him who seem to have slept away the fear and loss of battle. There is a spring to their step, a wild joy to their resounding voices. A soldier Jon doesn’t know slaps him on the back with a loud call of, “King in the North!”

Jon stills in his tracks, but the soldier is already far ahead, exchanging pleasantries with several other northerners.

The pyres in the yard are all but extinguished. Doubtless that they will have to be lit again. Perhaps it was a mistake to declare that all the bodies should be burned, but Jon had spoken over Daenerys’ talk of graves, thinking of Edd’s words on the battlements before the battle started. If he had died once more, he would have wanted his remains to be burned as well. Better that than to become prey to the white walkers some centuries hence, when another spell comes to disturb the dead in the crypts of Winterfell. 

The snow has thickened and a gale has risen that blows it around by the armful. Jon understands why most of the survivors have retreated to the great hall, eager to celebrate the end of the war. He understands those who have fled to some hidden corner to mourn alone. He understands Daenerys, who will be thinking ahead, always ahead, because this is what he himself used to do.

He is looking for Daenerys when he finds Sansa. She stands in front of one of the dying pyres, her hands clasped in front of her, her red hair sprinkled with snow. Ghost is sitting nearby, well within reach of her hand should she choose to pet his head. There's a familiarity to the direwolf's behaviour that tells Jon all he needs to know about what Ghost was up to while he was away in the south.

“I thought you’d in the great hall,” Jon says. “I hear that you and Tyrion have been preparing tonight’s feast.”

“He has been of help,” Sansa says, her tone flat.

Jon follows her gaze towards the pyre.

“Theon,” he says hesitantly, remembering her stricken face when he had walked into her room that morning. “Bran says he was brave to the very end. He died to defend his home.”

His words are hardly good enough, but they are what he would have wanted them to say if he’d died. _Jon Snow. He was brave to the end. He died a Stark of Winterfell._

“Do you think he wanted to die?” Sansa asks. “Did he want to die like you want to die?”

“I haven’t… I’m not…” 

Jon takes a step towards her and checks himself, another aborted impulse. Sansa gives him a long look, her blue eyes cool.

“We should talk,” she says, this stranger wearing his sister’s face.

 _Later_ , Jon wants to say.

What he says instead is, “Lead the way.”

 

 

 

**vii.**

 

They return to her chambers. Someone has come in and kindled a fire. Sansa divests herself of her cloak and gloves and, when she turns around and finds him standing awkwardly on the threshold, she moves to help him with his. This at last spurs him to move. He throws his cloak over a chest and comes to join her in front of the fire, refusing the chair she has brought forth for him.

“I need to tell you something.” He gazes down into the fire and then back up at her, and finds that the flames have brightened her gaze. Her eyes have an almost feverish gleam. Only then does he notice how tightly her hands are clasped, and he wonders what she expects him to say, what has prompted this white-knuckled grip. 

“What is it?” she asks.

“My mother… My mother was your aunt Lyanna. My father was Rhaegar Targaryen.” By now the words spill out like a well-rehearsed speech, to the point where he wonders if they still mean anything. _He did not abduct her... They were married in secret… Bran saw it. Sam found proof, in the citadel._ Suddenly Jon wishes they were in the crypts, standing in front of Lyanna’s statue as him and Daenerys had been, as him and Sam had been. The truth had sounded far more believable with those Stark vigils around them, ghosts of stone that lent to the scene the right flavour of long-buried secrets and momentous revelations. 

Sansa’s bedchamber does not provide an appropriate setting to discuss the fate of kingdoms. All he can think of is every moment they have spent alone since they were reunited, the petty bickering, the heated arguments, the blood rising to Sansa’s cheeks as she made another impassioned speech about something that he failed to properly comprehend.

It is a fact he’s come to terms with that he tends to lose his head around her.

“Does she know?” Sansa asks.

“Yes,” Jon says. “I couldn’t hide it from her, not when…”

“She’s your aunt.”

“I was going to say, not when it could lead her to think that I’m trying to steal the throne from her,” Jon frowns.

“It was stupid to tell her. She trusted you. She won’t be able to now that you’ve told her, and…”

“What does it matter!” Jon’s vision is swimming from the heat and the flames. The sour taste of the battle is still there at the back of his mouth, the dizzying impulse to go on, to rush ahead, to take out everything that lies between him and Bran - between him and the Night’s King - the remnants of a wild energy still coursing inside him with no release in sight. Would that the dead dragon had succeeded in setting him aflame.

“She will demand that all our remaining troops go south with her,” Sansa says. “And we need to negotiate… We need to negotiate with her that once the war is over and she has won, she will let the north go free. Jon, she isn’t my queen. I won’t…”

He holds up a hasty hand against her mouth. Sansa’s eyes widen. Jon himself couldn’t say exactly why he did it, why these words of high treason were in any way more dangerous than his talk of secret Targaryen offspring. Perhaps he had merely wanted to upset the scales. He takes a step closer and Sansa does too, and they lean towards each other, heads almost touching. Jon lets go of her, fingers folded over the wet imprint of her lips on his palm.

“I promised the north would help her if she took part in this war,” he says roughly. “I won’t betray her now. And neither will you.”

Sansa’s gaze is defiant.

“Your war is over, Jon. We were united in a common cause, but it cannot last.”

“Does there have to be an enemy? Don’t you long for peace?”

“Do you?” 

There is something garbled about her voice, a sheen to her eyes that makes it hard to look away, and even harder to hold her gaze. 

“It is far easier, isn’t it, to be at war,” Jon muses.

“Do you think I haven’t had enough?,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “Every time I stop moving I feel like I’m going to fall apart. Inside I am weak, that’s the truth, inside I’m shaking all the time. And I want to rest… I want a moment of rest where I don’t need to prepare for… For all the battles to come.”

He has spent so long searching for a crack in her armour, trying to understand what lay behind her marble-smooth exterior. Now that she stands exposed before him, tired and close to tears, giving exasperated sniffs to try and hide the fact that her nose is running, with her hands balled into fists - he almost wishes he could hand the armour back to her. Strap it upon her himself, buckle after buckle until she can stand on her own two feet again. 

“Wouldn’t now be the time?” He asks her gently. “Rest. You know I’d watch over you, and Ghost is right outside, and the Lady Brienne isn’t far away…”

“How am I supposed to?” Sansa says, with another compulsive sniff. “The thinking won’t stop. What would be best for our people? What do I even want? Tyrion wants us to be married again. He says he would be ready to…”

“He what?” Jon says stupidly. His gaze darkens. “And you would consider him?”

“What better prospect am I likely to have?” Sansa exclaims, one slender hand shoving back at him in anger. “He’s a good man. I don't love him but I’ve left those childhood fancies behind. What else am I supposed to do? Wait for a Targaryen prince to come and ravish me?”

Jon’s heated answer dies in his throat. He watches his own hand rise to stroke her cheek, and wonders if Jon Snow would have dared behave as he does now, as his father must have once behaved, following a whim with an utter disregard for the consequences. Her skin is hot to the touch, and he draws closer still, until he can finally evade her eyes. Sansa’s hand settles lightly at the back of his neck and then her fingers are sliding into his hair and he feels himself unravel, the tension of the previous night leaching out of him. He drops his head against her shoulder with a shuddering sigh. 

“When I saw you this morning,” he mumbles, “I wanted to…” _Come closer_ , he thinks. _Kiss your glistening cheeks. Kneel at your feet and beg you to tell me what to do._ “I wanted to help you forget. To make myself forget. You’re already thinking about what comes next, aren’t you? You’re trying to decide how you’ll use me to further your plans.”

Sansa’s arms tighten around his shoulders.

“Don’t you dare hurt me now,” she says, her voice so hollow that he whispers an urgent apology, first in the warm hollow of her neck and then at the corner of her lips. He wishes that he could pretend not to know his own mind, but as his mouth finds hers he is well aware of what he is doing. Claiming what he has no right to claim, falling headfirst into a trap that he sprung for himself.

 _How long has this been lying in wait?_ He wonders. Each battle wearing out his restraint and hers, each argument drawing them closer, and he remembers standing in a tent shouting at her as the light played off her red hair and wishing he could bear her down to the ground, resolve this without words since talking had failed them both, a wild thought that he’d quickly put out like pinching the wick of a candle. Trying to ignore the fleeting and all too pleasant burn of the flame.

And suddenly this madness has become a strange source of comfort for the both of them. For however long this moment lasts Jon resolves to give in to it, with his arms around her and her chin tilted up, her pale neck inviting the fervent press of his lips. Sansa urges him on with sharp pulls of the hand clutching his hair, and he lets himself be guided, eyes blissfully closed, until his knees finally give out and he slowly sinks down before her, never letting go of her waist - her legs - her knees, his cheek pressed against the rough woollen skirts.

“I don’t know who I am,” he admits in a frantic whisper. “I don’t know what I want… I no longer do. And I’m not sure I want to find out.”

Sansa pulls on his hair again, forcing him to raise his head and meet her eyes.

“You are a Stark,” she tells him. “You will always be a Stark. As to the rest, perhaps now that this is over, you can figure it out for yourself. Promise me you won’t run headlong into yet another battle.” 

“You and I both know such a promise is impossible.”

“And you are an impossible man,” she frowns. Taking a hold of the front of his jerkin, she forces him to straighten up, lest he should appear to bow before her icy glare. “If you need someone to tell you what to do, I will. You will honour your pledge, you will help her take the throne, and then you will come home.”

“And trust you won’t have left for Casterly Rock”, Jon says, a pale attempt at humour that doesn’t fool either of them.

“We have made enough hasty decisions in the heat of a war, haven’t we? Perhaps this time around, we can afford to think.”

Sansa looks around for the chair and pulls it forward so she can sink inside it. Jon gives a brief thought to getting up, but in the end he merely rests his back against her legs, letting the fire warm the soles of his boots. For a time neither of them speaks. As the fire crackles away, Jon finally becomes aware of other sounds outside of the room. The wind whistling as it rushes between the towers of the castle. The distant rumble of voices as people gather inside the hall.

He holds up his hand and feels her smaller fingers curl around his. Craning his neck, he tries to get a glimpse of her face. His kisses have brought colours to her cheeks, and a hint of a curve to her lovely mouth. She hardly looks happy, but for all his faults, Jon can usually tell when he’s fighting a losing battle.

“I would trade places with him if I could,” he says at length. “Theon. If it could make you happy.”

Sansa uses their joined hands to swat his head. “You’re stupid if you think your death wouldn’t destroy me.”

“If you had been hurt, in the crypts last night. I don’t know what…”

“But I wasn’t, and you’re alive as well, so maybe the both of us should take a moment to stop being sorry for ourselves, and be grateful.”

Jon huffs.

“Alright,” he says. And whispers it again, as his gaze returns to the shifting flames.

Sansa falls asleep with her hand upon his head, her fingers tangled in his dark hair, and he kisses that pale hand before he sets it gently upon her knee, holds on to it a moment longer before he resolves himself to rise and leave.

 

 

 

**viii.**

 

He would double back and wait out the feast in Sansa’s room if he could. But a day’s worth of flights has made him realise that running away does not befit him. Perhaps living is a debt he owes to those who died during the battle. Perhaps the dead are indeed the lucky ones, but all the same he will face his fate as brazenly as he had faced the dragon the night before - standing and screaming, rather than hiding behind an unlit pyre, or at the bottom of a mug of ale. 

Ghost is waiting for him but does not come too close, as if he had sensed it all - the moment of quiet in the room, and Jon’s newfound disquiet as the door shuts behind him.

“Stay with her,” Jon tells him. He only moves on once Ghost has sat down before Sansa’s door, red eyes watchful in the gathering gloom. 

_How will the records of my life go?_ he wonders as he walks away. _A bastard become Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, who died and became King in the North, who loved a Targaryen Queen, who became heir presumptive to the Iron Throne…_

And the truth of those tales will never be written down. The fury of battle, where every breath might be cut short by the swing of an axe or sword, the blood and the mud and the guts and the smoke. His fear as he fell off a wounded dragon, and the world toppled upside down and it felt for a moment as if it were the sky slamming hard against his back. The sound of the White Walker shattering at Hardhome, with a ringing so loud that it still echoed in his ears days after the battle. Waking up in an ice cave to find Ygritte asleep beside him, the weight of her so light against his side that he was already worried, at the time, that she might vanish from his hands. Daenerys holding out her hand, her face so desperately young as she tried to save him from certain death. 

Learning to lose everything, down to his own life, and then seeing Sansa climb down from her horse in the courtyard at Castle Black. Fate twisting another knife in his gut, as if to say, _You shall remember how painful it is, to feel alive._

The sun is coming down through the solitary window in the corridor. Jon lingers a moment to look at the black pyres in the white fields and at the forest in the distance. Somewhere beyond lie the ruins of the Wall.

All along his goal has been to defeat the icy threat that lay beyond it. Now that it is gone, perhaps it is time for him to live his life the way he wishes to.

It is a daunting prospect, but in this moment, there is some relief to be had in the sight of the battlements. The castle still standing, at the end of the Long Night - at the start of another night.

Once again, Jon sets off in search of Daenerys.

 _My watch is ended_ , he thinks, once and twice more for good measure as his steps lead him towards the stairs. _My watch is ended, my watch is ended._


End file.
